


Devils Don't Fly

by dura_mater



Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Drunk Driving, F/M, Original Character(s), Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Past Drug Use, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2017-08-07
Packaged: 2018-12-12 06:14:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11731161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dura_mater/pseuds/dura_mater
Summary: We all have chapters of our story that we don't read out loud, but sometimes it's best to read them anyway.





	Devils Don't Fly

A/N: Started as a drabble on Tumblr, but I apparently couldn’t let it go, so posting it here after some tweaking and expanding

 

You know devils don't fly  
So don't expect me not to fall  
Devils don't fly   
But God we almost had it all  
But I got chains and you got wings  
You know that life ain't fair sometimes  
Devils don't fly

  
But I try

 

(Devils Don’t Fly; _Natalia Kills)_

                _“Your recovery never ends,”_ they had said at his last group session. Granted, they said a lot of things, and that was almost a decade ago (and he’d been clean ever since, thank you very much), but it was the one thing in his six-month stint that stuck with him. The meaning was clear: you now had triggers; you couldn’t get out of in-patient and expect to be perfectly fine around the trap houses and back alleys. You can’t take the pain pills like normal mammals even if the doctor gave them to you or the cycle starts over and, best case scenario, you’re right back in group, sweating and shaking and dope sick, wishing desperately that whatever you had got your paws on would have taken you instead. Recovery never ends. You would always be an addict.

                In the ten years since, Nick had been fine. He kept his business in Savanna Central, and _only_ in Savanna Central. He made his money and went home and only thought about going back to the docks on a handful of occasions, all of which he powered through. Instead he’d call Finn, or his mom, or every now and then, his sponsor, the vixen he’d met in in-patient because “those types” stuck together, to let the other patients tell it.

                Now he called Judy.

                He called Judy and hoped to God she never found out about any of this.

                It was dishonest, it wasn’t _them_ , but he couldn’t risk her thinking that enough was enough, that she’d thrown him enough bones, too many to have to deal with the baggage he pretended he didn’t have. Not when his paws would shake when she walked away, or his muscles ached and mouth went dry when she was gone too long, and when he had nearly fallen off his carefully crafted proverbial wagon when she left for Bunnyburrow a year ago during that Nighthowler mess. Not when he was damn sure he went through withdrawal from _her,_ needing just one more hit of her warmth, her scent, her almost aggressive form of optimism that just radiated off her even in her sleep.

                He’d come close enough, but still _too_ close, just a few days ago. A normal patrol around Savanna Central (because fuck Nick Wilde, apparently), where they just happen to drive by two shady lowlifes ducked in an alleyway, trying just hard enough to be inconspicuous that they stuck out like sore paws. Turns out Nick knew them both. Lowlife One, just a stupid, unlucky marble fox no older than seventeen, bolted before they could even cut the lights on, with Officer Judy “Super Cop” Hopps in hot pursuit.

Lowlife Two turned out to be Frank, an opossum and an old plug and therefore Not Safe.

                “Nicky? Holy shit, is that you?” Frank laughed, and Nick couldn’t help but notice that a few (or a lot of) teeth gone missing since he’d last seen.

                _That could have been him._

                “Wow, they let you be a cop? What, they don’t do piss tests at the ZPD or somethin’?”

                “Frank, shut up.” Nick snapped, holding a paw up. He wasn’t here for pleasantries and friendly jokes. “What the hell do you think you’re doing here?” He knew the answer, he was dealing and even a kit could see that much. What Nick wanted to know was why he dragged his sorry ass all the way from the docks to downtown.

                “Don’t act brand new, Nicky, it’s just business! The money’s better here, you know that! Speaking of which,” Frank began digging in his pockets. “I think I got something that may interest you.”

                With a speed Nick didn’t know he had, he grabbed Frank by a scrawny arm and, in seconds, had he grubby cheek pressed to the cold brick of the alleyway.  The less Nick knew about what Frank was holding, the better.

                “What the hell are you doing?” The opossum yelped as his face met the brick alleyway and his arms forced behind his back.

“Placing you under arrest, idiot, what does it look like?”

 “What, you think you’re better all of a sudden?” Frank had sneered at him, looking him up and down with a critical eye, “You used to be right here with us, Nicky, or did you forget that?”

Nick didn’t forget. Nearly every day something in the darkest parts of his mind reminded him that this could have been him, with his teeth rotting out in a back alley trying to score a fix, or trying to get someone hooked on the cheap shit so he could always make enough money to score the good stuff. He could be breaking his back trying to outrun cops like the poor kit Judy had surely caught up to and booked by now. This could have easily been his life, and not a day went by that he didn’t remember that.

He sympathized with Frank, and the kid, he really did. They didn’t have fennec foxes to drag their high asses home after coming down (or crashing down, depending on how the night went), or mothers who cried and begged them to get help. They didn’t have sponsors or group therapy or buprenorphine and naloxone for the cravings or clonidine for the withdrawals and they sure as shit didn’t have angels like Judy Hopps. They were still in their “dark place”, as it were.

Nick arrested him anyway, because fuck that guy. He read Frank his rights and hauled him to the cruiser where, just like he guessed, Judy was already waiting with a sobbing kit, begging the bunny cop to not call his mom and Judy trying to calm him down before he started hyperventilating, which would have been a whole separate problem Nick didn’t want.

“Mikey, you keep your goddamn mouth shut, you hear me? You don’t say nothin’.” Frank snarled as he was shoved into the cruiser next to the sniveling teen. Neither of them said another word, and Nick dodged a bullet.

 

Still though, Nick still felt wound tight days later, like his muscles were crawling beneath his skin and his heart was beating much too fast and the bile in his stomach was inching too far up his throat after what felt like too close a call. He supposed that he could consider it a win that he wasn’t too concerned about relapse. He saw his trigger and shut it out. However that didn’t quell the residual anxiety of what had happened and the likelihood that, if others found the cesspool of fiends near the docks drying up,  it would probably happen to him again, with someone who wouldn’t be as smart to take their right to remain silent. They would talk and spill who he was and what he’d done and the hoops he would jump through to do it. Judy would look at him with those big violet eyes and realize that he wasn’t her Slick Nick, but something much darker, something not so easily romanticized. He’d die before that happened. He’d quit the force and take a flying leap headfirst off that old bridge she found him under before he let her see that in him, but the hypothetical was enough to make his chest seem too tight and the air seem too thick.

He hated that he felt like he had to call her, but he couldn’t keep breaking his mother’s heart with this, and there was a chance Finnick and his sponsor wouldn’t answer this late.

He paced his apartment while the line rang once, twice, three times too many before he felt panicked all over again, before his paws itched to mash the Call End button and-

“Mm, hullo?” she sounded as exhausted as he felt, pulled from what seemed to be a deep sleep.

“Hey, Carrots…it’s me…”

“Nick? What’s wrong? Is everything okay?” She asked, slowly sounding more alert. Nick could just barely make out the sounds of her shuffling in bed, prepping to come to his rescue once again.

_“Never let them see that they get to you.”_ That’s what he had told her before scurrying back behind his defenses: his dry humor, his quick wit. All of that failed him now, and he could bring himself to say anything but the truth.

“No…not really.” He sighed into the receiver, rubbing a paw across his tired eyes. “It’s just been a rough night and I just needed…” _To hear you, for you to tell me everything is alright and that you’ll never leave me and that- “_ I just needed someone to talk to.”

“Do you want me to come by?” She asked, and oh, how badly he wanted to say yes, that he needed her here, but-

“No, Judy, you don’t have to-“

“Hush, I’m on my way.” He wanted to argue with her, tell her that her voice over the phone was more than enough and that it was already one in the morning, but she had already hung up, probably springing her weary body into action, like she always did.

-

                It was 45 minutes between then and the time her timid knocks filled his modest apartment, and as much as just _knowing_ she was there uplifted him, see her wrinkled brow and that tiny frown twisted at his heart. What kind of jerkoff was he to let her schlep to his apartment in the middle of the goddamn night?

                “Nick, you look like hell…” She stated in that sad little coo of hers, bringing both paws up to his muzzle. The fox placed his own paw over hers, nuzzling closer into her touch.

                “Yeah, well I feel worse…” His flesh was still buzzing, his muscles still ached, and now his mind was racing with all the things he could possibly say when she inevitably asked why he was like this-

“Come on, let’s get you to bed.” She said instead, effectively shutting down his self-deprecating train of thought as she pulled him by the paw to his bedroom and gently pushed him into bed. He always felt like he was _more than_ with her: more than his seedy hustles, more than his even seedier young adulthood, more than he ever thought he could ever hope to be, which admittedly wasn’t much.  Crawling in next to him, Judy fell asleep nearly as soon as her head hit the pillow, stripped out of her jeans and down to her panties and the tank top she came over in, legs and arms tangled around Nick. The fox couldn’t thank God enough that she didn’t ask, not this time or any time before why he would call in the middle of the night, why, every now and then, he needed to be so close to her.

 

                It was that same need that brought them to _now_ , to his paws itching on her hip and begging to touch more of her, to his twitching nose buried in her neck to overdose on the scent of her (of summer and fresh earth and rain and grass and-). It’s what brought him to waking her from her doze with nips and kisses, slowly feeding his craving for her.

She started to stir underneath him, and he drank in the way her hips would twist and her nose would twitch, the way her bitty chest would rise to meet him as she sighed his name and pulled him closer.

His head spun, he was so love drunk on her-

“Nick…”

And that voice-

“Nick…”

And those paws pulling him up and catching his lips with hers, getting him hooked on her sweetness all over again. He caressed her with trembling paws sliding beneath that thin sleeping tank of hers. A rough paw pad ran along a budding pink nipple, and Judy arched beneath him with a sharp inhale before she did them both a favor and pulled the offending piece of clothing off of her and dropping it to the floor.

The foxed nuzzled into the soft patch of fur between her breasts as he dragged his paws down her sides, along her trim waist, and over her full hips before hoisting her thighs up. The scent of her arousal hit him like a punch to the gut, and as much as wanted to sink down and devour her and lick her clean afterward, the need to feel her closer, wrapped tight and hot around him outweighed everything else. Taking himself in one paw, he ran the tip along her soaked folds.

“Please…” she begged so sweetly, like _she_ was the one who needed _him,_ and those bitty claws ran down his back as her legs wrap around his waist. She pulled him closer until, inch by inch, he was sinking deeper and deeper into her, until her lower lips kissed the throbbing bulb of his knot before swallowing it whole. The tension in his muscles all but melted, as it always seemed to do when he pressed into her. His heart stopped its frantic staccato and his stomach untied itself from those knots and he finally felt _mammal_ and then some. He wasn’t just a - former, thank you very much - junkie, he wasn’t just a shifty fox. He was Nick, _her_ Nick, and she never hesitated to show him that she wanted _all_ of him.

He inched closer and closer to his apex with Judy’s every whimper, every moan, every sigh of his name, and so was she, if the raising of her hips and the arch in her back and – _oh_!- the way she squeezed around his cock were any indication, before he felt like he was free falling headfirst into his climax, driving his knot home, into her. It felt akin to an electric shock, shooting from head to tail as he emptied into her, her wet, clenching core wringing him for all he had until he was little more than trembling muscle and damp fur holding her, clutching her so tight as he nuzzled and panted and whimpered into the fur of her chest.

“Nick,” he heard, just barely as his mind floated back down to earth “I’m here. It’s okay…whatever it is, it’ll be okay…” She sighed against his lips before pulling him into a gentle kiss with her own shaking paws, and he believed her because she was too good to lie, at least to him. She was here and she always would be.

 

-

 

                While Judy didn’t claim to know everything about her partner or even about Zootopia on the whole, she knew well enough about the world _she_ came from, and she knew well enough to see the parallels between her fox’s unusual character over the course of the last few days, and many of the bunnies she grew up around.

                What Nick didn’t know was there was an epidemic, of sorts, that ravaged parts Bunnyburrow, just like it did in Podunk over in Deerbrooke County, and in small parts of the Meadowlands, and countless other little rural burrows dotting the outskirts of Zootopia where there was precious little to do after the long work day than screw and drink _and then some_ , and it seemed to take all kinds. Even in her own family, there were uncles and aunts the kits were never allowed to be alone with, and older siblings that would come home after _visiting relatives_ for what seemed like months at a time before being forced into normalcy, all while they fidgeted with their clothes and bounced their legs and ground their teeth and admittedly looked much worse for wear. An epidemic, the few who actually paid attention would call it, but Judy called it the biggest reason she hopped on the first thing smoking out of town and into the city instead of playing sheriff in Bunnyburrow. She’d stayed long enough to have her fun, get in her own fair share of trouble, but she couldn’t possibly build a life there…

                It ate at her for days, the way Nick had seemed to be… not himself after they picked up the opossum and the marble fox. Nick had always been good with talking down younger suspects, especially fox kits, and he usually enjoyed adding literal insult to injury with whatever unfortunate adult they had to stuff in the back. This time however he was completely different, withdrawn and unfocused at best, agitated at worst, and Judy could hear him grinding his teeth from the driver seat. It wasn’t appropriate to ask at the time, not with two suspects in the car, but after going through the motions of processing and peeking at criminal histories, Judy wasn’t sure she should ask at all. Mikey, the marble fox was a first time offender and a minor, and so it took no time to get him processed and released to his livid mother. Frank’s history, however, had been a laundry list of drug offenses, though no large quantities and therefore all misdemeanors. It wasn’t hard for Judy to put two and two together as to the many ways Nick may fit into all of it, but she decided that it may be best to keep it to herself. That is, until he called her, so obviously upset, in the middle of the night.

                “Nick?” She asked in nearly a whisper, when their heartbeats slowed and his know deflated and the afterglow all but faded. “Do you want to talk?” She knew he was awake; his heart was still beating too fast for him to be sleeping.

                “No.” The fox, that smartass, answered curtly, his words muffled by the fur of Judy’s chest. Judy powered on regardless.

                “You were really upset…is everything okay?”     

                “No.”

                “Is it about Frank?” Judy asked after a pregnant pause. “About the drugs?”

                Every muscle in Nick’s body seemed to tense as he shot up, green eyes narrowed and glaring down at her accusingly.

                “How do you know about that?” He nearly spat, and if it weren’t for the way his voice trembled, Judy may have been a little bit frightened.

                “I didn’t…until now.” She replied and she wanted to kick herself for it. Perhaps for the first time in her life, she didn’t know how she was expecting this conversation to go, but powering through and cornering him into a confession of - _what, exactly?_ – wasn’t it. The slowest minute of Judy’s life saw Nick staring down at her as he processed whatever had just happened, before his ears dropped and drug himself over to the side of the bed, head in his paws and looking so very miserable.

                “I never wanted you to find out…” He sighed. The serenity he had been feeling was long gone, and he was back to his anxious fidgeting.

                “I’m sorry…can you at least tell me what it is I’m finding out?” Judy asked, settling in next to him, her short legs dangling off the edge and bumping against his. She reached out and placed a comforting paw over his, just like she had so long ago on the sky tram, back when they had first met and he had told her about the trauma he had faced in his childhood. She could only hope that he would open up to her now as he did then.

                The fox regarded her with sad eyes, before he sighed, defeated.

                “Frank was my dealer.” He stated simply before taking a deep breath, steeling himself before he continued. “About 10 years ago, I was…not making the best decisions. I’d see Frank a few times a day, any time I had money to spend and he’d hook me up. What made me quit-” Nick ran a nervous paw up and down his arm, and his voice caught in his throat as he powered through. “What made me quit was going to sleep at my mom’s and waking up in the hospital with all these tubes and wires and shit hooked up to me. I don’t remember exactly what happened; I just felt so tired, so I laid down to go to sleep, but at some point apparently my body just started…shutting down. The doctor said it was acute respiratory failure.” Nick explained with finger quotes, his mocking impression of the doctor’s professional tone almost enough to make Judy laugh. _Almost_.  “I overdosed. My mom found me just…lying there, completely unresponsive, barely breathing. The doctors said that if she had been just a few minutes later, they may not have been able to bring me back.”

                It felt like a punch to her gut, the sudden realization that there was a moment, a brief span of five minutes where Nick, her fox could have…not been here. She couldn’t even bear to think the word.

                “Once they got me up and running, they sent me home. That’s when Mom sat me down, said she couldn’t take anymore and sent me to rehab. Six long months of detox and years of buprenorphine and naxalone treatments later, here I am.”  Nick rushed to finish, arms out as if to say “Look at me!” It was never easy to share what had happened to him, what he had done to himself and all the anguish he’d put his poor mother through. It was emotionally exhausting, but it was nothing compared to how he felt telling Judy of all mammals. He felt rubbed raw, like his very fur had been stripped away from him. He felt naked in the worst way.

                Judy, for her part, was stunned silent. A million questions ran through her mind, but they were all irrelevant. The hows and whats and whys didn’t matter now, not when he was a decade into being clean, and she wouldn’t be the one drag up his past when he’d worked so hard to move on with his life.

                “Why would you want to keep that from me?” She finally asked. She wasn’t accusatory, only curious.

                “Yeah right,” he scoffed, trying to slip his mask back into place with that damn smirk of his. “It was hard enough to get you to stop being afraid of foxes, I’m surprised you’re not running for the hills knowing I was a junkie.”

                “Nick, I’m being serious.” Judy chastised, unimpressed.

                “I am too.” The fox replied, trademark smirk falling. “Judy…I’ve told people before, people who mean a hell of a lot less to me than you do. Most of them wanted nothing to do with me after hearing that. I just…I just didn’t want you to leave me, too.” He finished sadly, eyes downcast as he squeezed her little paw in his. “You’re just so… _good_ , so perfect. It’d kill me if you left.”

                _Perfect._ It had been a while since Judy had heard that word in reference to herself, and while she was proud of all she had accomplished _since then_ , it was never a moniker she would have chosen for herself.

                _Speaking of…_

                “Did I ever tell you when I went to AA?” Judy asked, her voice quiet but steady. She nearly laughed at the speed Nick’s head whipped around to face her, obviously stunned.

                “You were an al-“

                “Oh no, nothing like that.” She interrupted. Between her uncles and a few brothers, she knew a problem drinker when she saw one and she certainly wasn’t one. That didn’t make the story any more pleasant, though, and she steeled herself with a heavy sigh. “I was 17. One summer, a friend of mine, Bobby, had a huge bon fire, almost everyone in our grade was going to be there. A few of my sisters and I take my dad’s truck, tell him we’ll be home by midnight. What we didn’t tell him was that we were taking a bottle of Yak Daniel’s from his stash on the way out.

                “So we get there and it’s _so_ much fun. Everyone was there. We played beer pong and my friend, Sharla almost broke her neck trying to dance on a table.” Judy laughed, “Next thing we know it’s almost midnight. We were all drunk, but my sisters are close to passing out. It wasn’t far, maybe 15 minutes between the farm and Bobby’s parents’ place, so I thought if I drove slowly, took my time, and we’d be fine.

                “We didn’t even make it a mile down the road before I get pulled over. Apparently we were swerving and the headlights weren’t even on. My sisters are passed out, I’m panicking, trying to figure out what I’m going to do, and when the officer comes to the door I just start blurting out ‘I’m sorry, I’m drunk and I just want to go home!’.”

                “Wow, you would have been a terrible business partner.” Nick joked, the pad of his thumb stroking the soft fur of his.

                “I’m an emotional drunk, so sue me. Anyway, they call my parents, they drive us home and we get this long lecture about drinking and driving and a ticket to appear in court. My dad wouldn’t even look at us for a week, and he maybe said two words to us on out court date.

                “We were first offenders, so we got off pretty light. AA once a month for 6 months, probation until we turned 18, we couldn’t drive unless it was to go to work or school, and like six-thousand bucks in fines.”

                “Holy shit…”

                “Yeah, we only _just_ finished paying them back. Anyway, the meetings were the worst. I took a notebook and pencil just to make it look like I was doing something, but for the first time in my life I just couldn’t pay attention. I didn’t belong there; AA was for mammals like Uncle Harvey or Drunk Billy, not me. We just kind of coasted through the meetings, saying the little affirmations, the group leader would sign our form saying we were actually there and we’d leave. Nothing they talked about really stuck until they brought in this guest speaker, from the Meadowlands.” Judy paused. It was nothing compared to Nick’s ‘rock bottom’, but it always sent a shiver through her when she thought about it. It had been a sign, one she had needed at the time.

                “I don’t remember his name; just that he was huge, even for a hare. He told us about the night he went out for drinks with his friends, and he decided to drive home. He said it was the biggest mistake of his life. On his way home, he…he said he just blacked out. When he came to there were lights everywhere, police and ambulances everywhere and he was in the back of a cop car. He got the attention of one of the officers, and that’s when they told him…he’d caused an accident. The mammals in the other car didn’t make it…

                “He only got 4 years, involuntary mammal-slaughter, and years on probation for the DUI. He told us how he thought about it every day of his life, how he’d never be able to make it up to the families of the people he’d killed. That’s when it all finally sunk into me, that it could have been me up there. That could have been me, having to live with the fact that I took someone’s life, knowing that a hundred years, let alone 4 could never make up for taking a life and for what? A fucking bonfire? I straightened up after that. I finished out the program, I even volunteered a few times afterward.”

                _Because of course she would._

                “So wait, if you had a DUI, how were you able to become a cop?” Nick asked. His mind was reeling, overloaded with everything he’d just heard. He just couldn’t picture Judy Hopps, of all mammals, getting busted for anything, let alone drunk driving.

                “I was a minor.” She replied with a shrug. “As long as I finished all the classes and kept my nose clean, as soon as I turned 18, as far as the government was concerned, it was like it never happened.”

                “Judy…why are you telling me all this?”

                “We all have chapters of our story that we don’t read out loud, that’s what my mother used to say. We’ve all made mistakes. I’m not perfect, back then I doubt I would even consider myself _good,_ and I want you to remember that the next time you want to keep secrets, dumb fox.” The two chuckled, and they felt decidedly more _them_ despite the tense subjects. “Nick, you’re everything to me to. I don’t want you to be afraid to tell me anything, and I don’t want you to suffer alone. Don’t ever be afraid to call on me if you need me, and don’t you ever, _ever_ worry about me leaving you. ”

                “Carrots,” The fox sighed, bring his forehead to rest against hers. “Thank you…I don’t know where I’d be without you.”

                “Thankfully we’ll never find out. You’re stuck with me, Slick.”

                He would always be in recovery. He would always have to tiptoe around and carefully calculate the rest of his life to make sure he never ended up where he was, but that was okay.

                He would also always have _her._

* * *

 

  1. I’ll spare you guys the Tragic Backstory™, but this story is personal to me in a lot of ways, so while I’m not proud of how it turned out, I’m just happy you powered through it.
  2. Random, but true story: my husband and I used to rent a house from this elderly couple who had a “go to” electrician they only called Drunk Billy. We didn’t stay there very long.



               

               

               


End file.
